Ryan Barrett's blog

geomapping

Resolving an IP address to a hostname, or reverse
DNS, has been around for a while. However, resolving an IP address to a
physical location, or geomapping, has just recently come into its own.

If you’re interested in the raw data, many of the regional
RIRs (notably
RIPE, ARIN, and
APNIC) publish dumps, or “splits,” of their databases.
This forum thread has more
detailed information.

However, most people want something that they can simply plug into their web
site that will tell visitors where they’re located. Companies such as
Quova, Akamai, and
MaxMind provide IP-to-location services of varying
resolution and accuracy. Except for a few flukes (e.g. all AOL users are in
Virginia!), these services are fairly good.

Not surprisingly, they charge money for access to their databases. If you’re a
business, I’ll let you decide on that value proposition yourself. However, if
you’re a small, independent web site, GeoBytes has a
free (as in beer) mapping service you can
use. I’m using it on my voyeurism page
right now. Just plug this javascript into your web site wherever you’d like to
show the user their location:

I’m using it on my voyeurism page
right now. If you’d prefer the user’s region, country, or one of many pre-bulit
messages, you can take your pick from GeoByte’s
templates.

One caveat: to support this service, GeoBytes occasionally
shows an advertisement
instead of your own page, about once every 50 page views. This is unfortunate,
so I’m looking for an ad-free replacement along the lines of
InternetFrog.